Activity Diary (Disability)

An activity diary, or time-use diary, is a structured record in which a person logs the activities they do across a day, how long each takes, and the context in which it happens; in disability research the method is adapted to capture daily activity participation, time allocation, the assistance people use, and the barriers they encounter. Diaries may cover a full 24-hour day in sequential slots or sample episodes throughout the day, and they record not only what the person did but where, with whom, with what human or device assistance, and against what obstacles. Aggregating these records yields indicators of how time is spent and how fully a person participates in life domains, which can be mapped onto the Activities and Participation component of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). By grounding measurement in concrete daily activity and environmental context, activity diaries complement momentary and clinical measures and reveal the lived texture of participation that summary functional scores miss.